Community Profile/Library Overview
Community Profile:
Brighton High School is a public high school that is part of the Boston Public School system. There are 1,208 students in the student body, and 77 teachers teaching 200 core classes. The student body is a diverse one: 52.7% are Hispanic, 38% are African-American, 5% are Caucasian, and 3.3% are Asian. However, the student body is also very disadvantaged from a socioeconomic perspective, as 70.7% of students receive free lunches, and an additional 7.9% qualify for reduced fee lunches. 51.6% of students speak English as a second language, and 21.2% have limited English proficiency, both of which are substantially higher than the district average. The problems faced by students are reflected in the comparatively low graduation rate - in 2009, the adjusted rate of students who graduated in four years was only 58.4%.
These statistics have implications for the scope of this project. Teaching about issues of civil rights is a challenging process because of the complexity involved in accurately discussing the motivations, events, causes and impacts of social movements. To find resources that demonstrate an adequate level of complexity while striving to find resources that will be accessible to students who have difficulties with English is an additional challenge. Therefore, an effort has been made to avoid overly complex texts, and at the request of the teacher, many of the resources included are videos, which tend to be more easily accessible to students.
Source: Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Brighton High School, n.d. Web. 01 Dec. 2010.
<http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/profiles/student.aspx?orgcode=00350505&orgtypecode=6&> @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 10pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }
Library Overview:
The Brighton High School library is staffed by a certified librarian, a graduate of Simmons' GSLIS program. The library space is a large, rectangular room - at one point, it served as the school's shop, and that history is evident in the layout. The shelves line the walls, and there is a small cluster of computers in the back of the room, and tables in the middle of it. Though the school's actual collection of books is quite small and limited, they are linked into the Boston Public Library network, and all students have BPL cards. Therefore, for the purposes of this assignment, resources have been suggested that are accessible through interlibrary loan within the BPL network or that are available through the databases the library subscribes to in order to ensure that students will be able to access them as needed.
Brighton High School is a public high school that is part of the Boston Public School system. There are 1,208 students in the student body, and 77 teachers teaching 200 core classes. The student body is a diverse one: 52.7% are Hispanic, 38% are African-American, 5% are Caucasian, and 3.3% are Asian. However, the student body is also very disadvantaged from a socioeconomic perspective, as 70.7% of students receive free lunches, and an additional 7.9% qualify for reduced fee lunches. 51.6% of students speak English as a second language, and 21.2% have limited English proficiency, both of which are substantially higher than the district average. The problems faced by students are reflected in the comparatively low graduation rate - in 2009, the adjusted rate of students who graduated in four years was only 58.4%.
These statistics have implications for the scope of this project. Teaching about issues of civil rights is a challenging process because of the complexity involved in accurately discussing the motivations, events, causes and impacts of social movements. To find resources that demonstrate an adequate level of complexity while striving to find resources that will be accessible to students who have difficulties with English is an additional challenge. Therefore, an effort has been made to avoid overly complex texts, and at the request of the teacher, many of the resources included are videos, which tend to be more easily accessible to students.
Source: Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Brighton High School, n.d. Web. 01 Dec. 2010.
<http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/profiles/student.aspx?orgcode=00350505&orgtypecode=6&> @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 10pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }
Library Overview:
The Brighton High School library is staffed by a certified librarian, a graduate of Simmons' GSLIS program. The library space is a large, rectangular room - at one point, it served as the school's shop, and that history is evident in the layout. The shelves line the walls, and there is a small cluster of computers in the back of the room, and tables in the middle of it. Though the school's actual collection of books is quite small and limited, they are linked into the Boston Public Library network, and all students have BPL cards. Therefore, for the purposes of this assignment, resources have been suggested that are accessible through interlibrary loan within the BPL network or that are available through the databases the library subscribes to in order to ensure that students will be able to access them as needed.
